helent

I live in Fitzroy in Melbourne, and would never live anywhere else - love being close to the city, and the coffee.

I work for the state government, and outside of work I mostly like sewing, op shopping, watching tv on dvd, and hanging with friends.

I do a lot of patchwork, but can never decide if I love or hate it - I love hand-made things, I love the ethos of the Arts and Craft Movement, of applying artistic skills to everyday items, of reclaiming fabrics for a new use, but sometimes, I absolutely hate the grind of actually making things! So my projects drag on for months...

I've collected postcards all my life, starting from when I was a kid and my dad used to send them to us when he travelled for work. Because he always travelled to the same place (Geneva), I have a lot of duplicated cards from there! And my friends and family now know to send me cards whenever they travel.

I like postcards from places - beautiful images of your town/country, or reproductions of old places. And also tacky and cheesy cards - kangaroos on surfboards, postcards of unassuming local landmarks, like the local shops, promotional cards for crappy motels. And if I come across a store that is still using the postcards they bought in bulk twenty years ago, that's heaven.

Art cards are also good - textiles and fabrics, local artists, photography (Ansell Adams, Dorothea Lange, shots of buildings), things to do with the Old West and westerns, anything to do with movies, cute cats, retro ads - I'm pretty easy to please.

I love really scrappy squilts of almost any design. I like all colours, buy I don't use too many bright colours, and I don't like novelty prints or most prints that look like actually things. Check out my quilts on flickr.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood, Dexter, Arrested Development, Big Love, Degrassi Junior High, Oz, Supernatural, Spooks, Black Books, Veronica Mars, Deadwood, Burn Notice

Heat, Le Samourai, Near Dark, Stander, Brokeback Mountain, Saved!, Pride & Prejudice, The Outsiders, Cry Baby, Millers Crossing, Intolerable Cruelty, Hud, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Ride with the Devil, Dollars Trilogy, Ocean's Eleven, Out of Sight, Gosford Park, The Departed

Patchwork/quilts

Favourite authors: Neal Stephenson, Jane Austen, W. Somerset Maugham, John D McDonald, Raymond Chandler, Carl Hiaasen

Neko Case, Calexico, Iron and Wine, Talking Heads, Nick Drake, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Grant-Lee Phillips, Rhapsody in Blue, The Smiths, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, They Might Be Giants, Massive Attack